Tomás Ó Flatharta

Looking at Things from the Left

Archive for the ‘Pavel Rubtsov (Pablo Gonzalez)’ Category

How Much Proof Is Needed? The Case of Vladimir Putin’s Spy Pavel Rubtsov / Pablo Gonzalez

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Speculating about the identity of spies is a largely useless activity unless the secret operator has been unmasked. For example in Ireland, examining the profiles of a few high-profile unmaksed British spies – Freddie Scappaticci, Seán O’Callaghan and Denis Donaldson – the vast majority of the people who came across these informers never guessed anything was wrong until the unmasking.

Pavel Rubtsov/Pablo Gonzalez is an unmasked Russian spy. We do not yet know how much damage he did, how many lives he betrayed, how many people lost their lives, how many lives were ruined, because of the services he offered to Putin’s far-right racist régime.

An important sub-plot in this story concerns members of the international anti-Ukrainian left – including the former Irish members of the European Parliament Clare Daly and Mick Wallace – who associated themselves with campaigns for the release of Rubtsov/Gonzalez after he was detained by Polish state security forces who believed (correctly, it transpires) that their prisoner was a Putin spy.

After Rubtsov returned to Russia as part of a prisoner-exchange he was personally greeted by President Vladimir Putin. The case against the Russian spy had become overwhelming, but ex Irish MEP Clare Daly still peddled a false cover-story :

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Free Boris Kagarlitsky – Free All antiwar prisoners in Russia

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BORIS KAGARLITSKY
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

On February 13, 2024, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation sentenced prominent Russian socialist, anti-war activist and author Boris Kagarlitsky to five years jail
for ‘justifying terrorism’.

This campaign exists to win his freedom and that of all other antiwar prisoners in Russia.


Free Boris Kagarlitsky – Free All antiwar prisoners in Russia (Web link)


Register for Boris Kagarlitsky Conference (Web Link)

Online Conference – Boris Kagarlitsky and the Challenges of the Left Today

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

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Interview with Ilya Yashin – Russian anti-war activist released as part of a prisoner exchange – plus an Irish Clare Daly (ex MEP) connection

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Cristina Mas interviews Released Russian Political Prisoner Ilya Yashin (Web Link)

During the interview Cristina asks Ilya about Pablo Gonzalez (real name Pavel Rubtsov ) who was accused of espionage in Poland. See postscript about an Irish connection at the end of this fascinating interview.

Cristina Mas writes for the Spanish language journal Ara
Cristina Mas articles in the magazine Ara

Ilya Yashin
Cristina Mas

Ilya Yashin—Interview with Cristina Mas, Ara, September 30, 2024

Ilya Yashin is a Russian opposition politician who was released from prison on August 1, in the prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States. Since his exile in Germany, he has been touring several European cities to reach out to the Russian diaspora, which has taken him to Barcelona. Yashin, now 41, was jailed in 2022 for criticizing the invasion of Ukraine on his YouTube show. He was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for denouncing the Butxa massacre. He is now free thanks to the largest prisoner exchange of the Cold War, in which sixteen Russian political prisoners and U.S. citizens Evan Gershkovitx and Paul Whelan were exchanged for prisoners in the West claimed by Russia, including Spain’s Pablo Gonzalez, accused of espionage, and Vadim Krasikov, who shot a man in the head to death in a Berlin park on Moscow’s orders.

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